Lea Ryan's splendiferous journal of semi-coherent ramblings

Monthly Archives: May 2013

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I swear I am. I have no movie post this week, mostly because I have had no time to watch a movie. Isn’t that horrible? I think it is. We’ve been moving our junk to the new place, and the amount of it is overwhelming. I don’t understand how we fit it all in that tiny house.

The new house is bigger, thank God. Living somewhere new after so long (10 years) feels very awkward. The distribution of space is different. Like, the bathroom cabinet, for example. The new one is bigger but it’s divided into so many drawers and tiny cabinets that I can’t fit as much in there.

I haven’t written squat in the last 5 days or so. Maybe a few paragraphs? And the character concept drawings? Honey, fuggettaboutit. I haven’t slapped down line 1. There has also been no tv watching, no working out, very little video gaming, and very little sitting down in general. My life has become an endless series of boxes. I grow weary of this business.

The house will be awesome once we settle in. I know this. And I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled shenanigans soon enough. Blog attendance will be sporadic for the next week or two.

Description from IMDB: “The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”

This one is quick because I have stuff to do.

Oh my. Where to begin. First, this was better than Borat. I freaking hated Borat.

Aladeen, the main character, has zero redeeming qualities, which is what makes him both amusing and incredibly obnoxious at the same time. Anna Faris is in it, too. Not her best work. Her character, while better than Aladeen, was pretty brainless.

For the most part, the movie was funny with the same kind of humor as Borat, that ha ha let’s laugh at the foreign guy. It was absurd, lots of sex jokes, etc. Most of this probably sounds like complaining, but I did actually like the movie. The Dictator gets a B+.

I was playing around with the negative effect on my phone camera and decided to harrass our pets for a while. I think these actually look pretty cool. I apologize for the blurry/haziness in some spots. I think the camera on my phone is not feeling well.

Here’s a normal picture of Max first so we can get a frame of reference.

His blacks are white and his whites are black. It’s like the anti-Max. I like how blue his eyes look.

This next one is my favorite of the set.

Next up, we have Zoe the dog. Yes, she has cataracts. She’s an old girl. It’s to be expected.

Sneaker did not participate willingly. My daughter wanted me to note that she is not strangling the cat.

We’re moving in the next couple of weeks. Have I mentioned that? I think I have. The next house has a basement and in that basement shall be movie theater-themed decor. It’s going to be the place in which I go insane with movie geekiness. Here’s a taste of what’s going in it.

First, the toy collection. It’s a good thing we’re getting a bigger place because my movie toys were taking over various corners of our current tiny house. I might post actual pictures when I get them set up but the pieces include: queen alien statue, jack skellington statue, various hot wheels cars: batmobiles, Fast the Furious cars, some Tron models: light cycles and recognizer, wicked witch of the west doll, an entire set of the simpsons toys from Burger King. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. We have shelves down there. The collection should fit nicely.

We have purchased the following posters.

Those aren’t all the posters we plan to put down there. I want a Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction and others to be determined. Oh, and I have a Doc Ock poster (Spiderman) that my son was kind enough to donate.

We already have the popcorn machine.

We’re looking at, but have not yet purchased, these Let’s Go to the Lobby tin signs. Retro. Awesomeness.

And this, which I want to put on the staircase. You can change the words.

I would get a case and put some candy in there if I didn’t think the children would eat it in like 5 seconds. and by children, I also mean me.

I need to tattoo these words somewhere I can see them every day. I have a tendency to chicken out, not from writing and publishing, thank God, but some marketing activities I could be doing.

I’m delaying the kickstarter again. I’m not chickening out from that. I’m okay with the kickstarter campaign because it’s a win for me no matter the outcome, the consolation prize being free advertising.

The task I’m having trouble with is creating illustrations to go with the book. The goal is to incorporate them into the trailer and use them as marketing tools elsewhere, too.

I’ve been drawing pretty much my whole life. Despite that fact, I’ve never been one of those people who can just whip something up in 30 seconds and have it look perfect. I’ve known people like that. I admire them very much. I wish I could have that level of genius.

So, there are 4 illustrations. Each features a character or two, and those are the most difficult kinds of illustrations for me. I never seem to get them right. I’ve actually had them planned for a while. I put them down, but I can’t get them out of my head, so I pick them back up.

This weekend, I put them aside for the eleventy billionth time. My confidence wavered again. Part of the one I’ve been most focused on the most wasn’t looking as good as I would have liked. Last night, I picked it back up and through some perseverance, I improved it, and when I finished, I realized that I can do this and it can be awesome. I just need to keep going. I can’t let doubt get in the way this time. I don’t want to chicken out again.